Notes From Afar

This evening I walked to the beach to better see the sunset. The tide was out so the seawall was blocking the view from Aradia. I found myself thinking of her, of course, wanting to share the moment. So I reached down and touched the water, knowing that far away she was touching or soon would touch the ocean as well. Somehow that simple gesture made me miss her a little less, made her not seem so far away. Crazy.

Love really is a kind of madness. A pleasant yet tortuous madness. Ten weeks ago I barely knew of her. Now it seemed I could barely go ten minutes without thinking of her. All in the blink of an eye.

Never have I been so enchanted, so enraptured, so captivated by another. It’s not just the love I feel. I love Jean just as much. There is something more here. A sense of potential. Parts of me stirring awake like a volcano rumbling to life. A power and clarity I haven’t felt before. Perhaps I am emerging from my former self. James 2.0

But the strange thing is I don’t know what the power will bring or even what the clarity is about. It all feels so ‘right’ it is disconcerting. Yet I still fear fucking it up somehow. Am I really worthy of this woman? I thought I was pretty well along my path of being ‘in my power’ but I’ve actually been wondering why this amazing woman would be interested in me Perhaps the universe tossed us together to test us, as I know she is being challenged by this relationship as well.

What a long strange trip it’s been…, and it has only just begun. My whole universe has irreperably changed simply by knowing a woman like her actually exists.

Enough rambling. Back to coding for a while. Really need to refill the cruising kitty!

“When I go out at dawn, I pray to the breeze, to the newness of life, not to anybody in particular but to the birds, the plants, just to life itself. I pray to the dawn, which is th awakening of life - for the plants, for the birds, for us.

When I pray at noon I pray to the sun, which gives us warmhearted and life and growth. When I pray in the evening, I pray to the breeze again, to what is around me, to air, to why comes with the evening. We pray to all, to everything.” - Kalley Musial, Navajo potter

Away she flew, off to distant lands.

I know the time will fly. I know a month and 3 days is nothing. I know I will join her soon and she welcomes my company. I know these things.

But it is still strange. ‘Hard’ isn’t the right term. I miss her, of course. Her smell. Her laugh. Her voice. The feel of her flesh. The taste of her lips, her juices, her sweat. The feel of her presence. Her eyes, those amazing eyes…. But it feels right to be apart for a little while.

It’s all still a mystery. So unanticipated, so spontaneous, yet so right. I’ve so much to say yet I still feel 16, tongue-tied and awkward. IM seems easier for some things, but in the end it needs to be words spoken face to face, looking into each others eyes. I’m so quiet by nature. So is she. Perhaps not a good thing…. Have to watch out for that.

It’s been only a few months, just since mid-April, but I’ve known her for so much longer than that.

God I love her. I’m not insecure or anything but it was sure nice to hear her say the words before she walked away….

“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… cruising, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it. What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?”

- Sterling Hayden

Ten hours of driving later and I’m back in Cali, the first leg of a roundabout whirlwind laid-back frenzy of a trip. Redding still looks like Redding. Nice to see the girl-child and gKids though, along with other sundry family.

The next leg is physically shorter, a few more hours south. Yet the journey is much, much longer. Each step taking me farther than I have ever gone, to places I’ve never been. Similar places, yes. But this different. Energy coming, minds moving, words dancing, bodies moving in new dimentions and new directions. I can feel my spirit growing, my soul expanding. Racing headlong into…what? A new adventure? A new relationship? A soul-mate? What does it mean when you suddenly meet someone you have known for lifetimes, when you can physically feel your universe shift?

We shall see. Expectation management is, as usual, a major problem. It is easy to say, relax and enjoy the ride. It is much harder to put it into practice.

Even if it ended today, I have been changed forever. It goes to show, be careful what you wish for….

The defaults in Rails with ActiveRecord is beautiful when you are just getting started and are created everything for the first time. But once you get into it and your database schema becomes a little more solidified, the things that would have been easy to do by relying on the conventions of Rails require a little bit more work.

In my case, I had a form where there was a database column named “num_guests”, representing the number of guests. When the field fails to pass validation, the error messages is something like

Num guests is not a number

Not quite the text that we want. It would be better if it said

Number of guests is not a number

After doing a little bit of digging, I found the human_attribute_name method. You can override this method in your model class to provide alternative names for fields. To change our error message, I did the following

class Reservation < ActiveRecord::Base
...
validates_presence_of :num_guests
...
HUMAN_ATTRIBUTES = {
:num_guests => “Number of guests”
}

def self.human_attribute_name(attr)
HUMAN_ATTRIBUTES[attr.to_sym] || super
end
end

(taken from http://www.theodorenguyen-cao.com/2009/04/06/custom-field-names-in-rails-error-messages/)

Firefox3 stores a lot of info in sqlite3 databases. Optimizing those databases can speed up load time and reduce the file sizes of these files as well.

On linux or os x, go to your profile directory (Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ or .firefox/profiles/ ) and execute the following:

for i in *.sqlite; do echo “VACUUM;” | sqlite3 $i ; done

This reduced my places.sqlite file to 10% of its previous size.

From Yoga Journal

./configure –with-ns –with-ns-antialias-text=t